


Good to Meet You

by Door



Series: HMS Skypilot [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, kes dameron/knitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 20:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5758375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Door/pseuds/Door
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Poe was 32 and had spent most of his life flying in fighter squadrons. He made friends quickly, and tended to keep them. He was reliable in a firefight, and folks liked to have him at their backs.</p><p>Finn was 23, he was pretty sure, though stormtroopers didn't put much stock in keeping track of ages, so it was a best guess. He'd never had a friend before Rey, not really, and even with her off on her mission she was on his mind pretty much constantly."</p><p>These were the things Poe and Finn knew about each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good to Meet You

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [winterdoll](http://archiveofourown.org/users/winterdoll) for the beta!

Poe was 32 and had spent most of his life flying in fighter squadrons. He made friends quickly, and tended to keep them. He was reliable in a firefight, and folks liked to have him at their backs. He was even, according to Jess, “not the worst face to see in the mess every damn day for the rest of my life,” and if he sometimes drank too much and bragged about being the best pilot in the Resistance, it was hard to hate him. “He’s friendly about it,” said Snap, “and right, besides. Hand me that torch, will you?”

Poe smiled a lot, and called everyone “buddy” or “pal.” “I thought at first it was because he was bad at remembering names,” Karé said. “We were cadets in the Academy together, and there were a lot of new people to remember. But no, he’s good with names.” The friendliness extended to all the droids on the base, though Finn had quizzed him once on a free afternoon and discovered that he knew their actual designations, too.

It wasn’t particularly cold where the Resistance base was on D’Qar, but Poe frequently seemed to be wearing a sweater. He had a lot of them, and they stood out as the only pieces of clothing he ever wore that weren’t Resistance-issued or a flight suit. “Yeah, his dad makes them,” Jess said. “Knits. The early ones were real ugly, but he’s gotten pretty good.” A couple weeks after that, there was a cold snap, and suddenly it seemed like everyone on the base was wearing a Kes Dameron sweater. Finn walked into the mess one morning to find one sitting folded at his usual spot. It was a dark red, with black detailing across the chest and on the arms. Finn shrugged off his jacket and pulled the sweater over his head. The sleeves were a little long, so he carefully rolled them up.

“Haven’t seen that one before,” Karé nodded at the sweater. “Hey, while you’re up can you grab me a piece of Xirlia?”

Finn scanned the counter. “Golden bread thing?”

“That’s the one.”

These were all things Finn would find out in the weeks that made up his recovery.

Finn was 23, he was pretty sure, though stormtroopers didn't put much stock in keeping track of ages, so it was a best guess. He'd never had a friend before Rey, not really, and even with her off on her mission she was on his mind pretty much constantly. He liked to talk about how she'd gotten them off Jakku in the Falcon, how his gun had gotten stuck and she’d flipped the freighter to give him a shot. He downplayed his own involvement in the whole affair.

He drifted around the base while he was healing, filling in and doing odd jobs when he wasn't occupied with physical therapy. General Organa and her staff spent three consecutive days picking his mind for everything he could remember about First Order tactics, which turned out to be quite a lot. “I would have guessed his rank was a lot higher, if he hadn't told us otherwise,” she commented later. “He seems to remember every schematic he's ever glanced at. He doesn't know what it all means, but he remembers.”

Finn was excellent with weapons. After a general instruction and a moment to himself, he'd be shooting or striking at a proficient level or higher. When someone told him about Rey’s lightsaber battle with Kylo Ren, which was a hot topic around the base, despite no one present having actually witnessed it, he sulked for a day about having missed seeing it. “She was brilliant, I bet,” he told BB-8, who whistled in agreement.

Finn didn't like to see people hurt, which made the time he spent volunteering in the medbay a little odd to consider. “I don't think they allowed for a lot of healing in the First Order,” Dr. Kalonia murmured to Poe when he came in with a broken arm after a hard landing on a recon mission. Finn had gone still, and then silently set up a tub of bacta, his jaw tense. Later, as he adjusted the wrapping around the splint and Poe explained for the tenth time that it was a clean break and would heal easily, Finn pinned him with a look. “Be more careful,” he said.

“Pal,” Poe said, helpless. “Yeah. I will.”

Finn was hesitant to take up leisure activities. He got restless when he didn't have a task, jumpy like he was waiting for someone to call him out on it. The base had a holo table, which he’d expressed some interest in after recognizing it from the one he'd seen on the Falcon. Jess bullied him into learning to play Dejarik, promising to be “a lot nicer than a Wookiee if I lose.” Finn had taken to it quickly, and could often be found at the table during his off hours. He generally wasn’t a sore loser, but he was an _enthusiastic_ winner.

“I didn't realize you were so fond of Dejarik, Poe,” General Organa observed in passing one day.

Poe choked on the sip of water he'd been taking and Finn looked up, slightly alarmed. Poe waved him off. “My mother loved it,” he told her.

“Well, I'm glad you've found an opponent as capable as Shara was,” the General said with a nod.

“Yeah,” Poe replied weakly.

Physical books were scarce on the base--most Resistance members who were readers preferred to keep digital libraries--but Lt Connix had a fondness for antiques, and started lending books to Finn. He read quickly and voraciously, preferring fantastic and epic adventures. “I love hearing about the stories he's reading,” Rey said on her weekly call one day when Finn had stepped out to get something to show her. “He's a very good storyteller.” Finn wasn't, in fact. He'd get so excited about what happened next that he'd skip over important details and have to loop back later to mention them. It didn't seem to bother Rey or BB-8, who was the other half of Finn’s audience.

The Resistance wasn’t a cash-rich operation, and it was generally understood that you were there for the cause and not the pay, but the base had a small commissary, and if you pulled your weight, you got paid. Finn had started in surprise when Lt Connix told him what he’d earned so far. “We set up an account in your name while you were convalescing,” she told him.

“Why’s it say my second name is ‘Jakku’?”

“It’s just a placeholder,” she explained. “Commander Dameron’s idea.”

“Hilarious,” Finn said flatly.

He used his pay to purchase a second-hand datapad and loaded it up with more books. Finn was open to all suggestions, and people--from droids to members of command--swinging by his table in the mess to mention a title they particularly liked became a fairly common sight. Poe wracked his brain for things to suggest, leaning heavily on the stories he and his mother had read together when he was a kid. Rey could only suggest ancient Jedi texts, which couldn’t have been very interesting to anyone not actively training to be a Jedi, but Finn read them anyway. He liked having something they could groan about together, he told BB-8.

These were the things Poe would learn in the weeks after Finn woke up.

However, on the day he woke up, Poe only knew Finn as the defector who had saved his life, a man insanely brave and devoted to his friend. He was someone who BB-8 trusted, who had completed his mission and been ecstatic to see Poe alive and well.

Finn woke up in pain, with Rey’s name on his lips. A med tech assured him that she was alive, gave him an injection, and the pain and everything else faded to a haze. When he woke again, Poe was there, and Finn knew him as a daring Resistance fighter, a devoted master to BB-8, and a damn good pilot. He knew him as someone who had been genuinely glad to see Finn alive, the second person he’d ever known who cared about his well-being.

“Poe,” Finn rasped, his voice sounding rusted to his own ears.

“Yeah, bud,” Poe leaned forward, grasped Finn’s hand in his.

“Good to meet you, Poe,” he managed.

Poe’s smile was slow, and bright. “Good to meet you too, Finn.”

**Author's Note:**

> New life goal: incorporate Poe's emotional use of the word "pal" into all things.
> 
> On [tumblr](http://door.tumblr.com/).


End file.
